IFRA

Gary Cosimini, business development director at Adobe Systems, answers two questions important to the future of e-reading devices.

Apple's iPad does not run Flash. Is HTML 5 an alternative?

Cosimini: HTML 5 is a proposed standard still under development, and not yet supported by most current web browsers like Internet Explorer. Adobe participates in the standards body working on HTML 5 and we'll support it in our web authoring tools like Dreamweaver.

But it is no replacement for Flash or AIR; it's more like an advance in the state of the art for HTML. It will still require interpretation within each browser that supports it, which will lead to inconsistent results just as you have with HTML today. And it will require licensing of the H264 codec, which is not free and may limit its availability.

Flash allows a rich mixture of vector graphics, typography, user interaction and video, and the tools to create these user experiences – Flash, Flash Builder (formerly known as Flex), Catalyst and InDesign – that do not exist for HTML 5 applications. That's why you see Flash in use on millions of websites and in practically every example of rich web advertising.

In the end, the notion that HTML 5 is a replacement for Flash or AIR is hard to support.

Can we imagine a light version of Adobe Air to open creative possibilities on high-end e-reading devices ?

Cosimini: The interest in eReading is certainly exploding, much of it prompted by the release of the iPad but just as much by the proliferation of dedicated lightweight reading devices. Devices based on the Reader Mobile SDK (RMSDK ) benefit from consistent support of the ePub and PDF formats and, should the device manufacturer so choose, interoperability among devices and digital rights management provided by Adobe Content Server. Over 25 manufactures worldwide have chosen RMSDK and over 100 content distributors or owners use Adobe Content Server. The number of different reading devices based on RMSDK increases almost every day.

What we see in the pipeline for 2010 and 2011 are many new slate-type devices. Unlike the current generation of eReading handhelds, these slates will offer full touch-sensitive color screens and the ability to run Flash and AIR applications on operating systems such as Android 2 and Windows 7. Naturally, Adobe is working to bring full versions of Flash and AIR to as many devices as possible, and I think you are going to be impressed at the result. It will be a big step beyond what we are presently seeing in apps for devices like the iPad.

The problem with imagining AIR on the current generation of eInk devices is that the rich functionalities that make AIR applications so appealing – color, animation, gesture based navigation and interaction, video and animation, direct web access – are not available simply because of the hardware. Therefore AIR would end up even less capable than the RMSDK. The next generation of eReading devices will probably all feature touch screens and lightweight operating systems based on Linux and Android, and therefore will support AIR applications.